Welcome to the first issue of Journal of International Consumer Marketing for the year 2016! I am now entering my fourth year as Editor-in-Chief. Every year I have seen a noticeable improvement in both quantity and quality of article submissions, which is an ideal situation for any editor to be in. You are making it easier for me to do my job! This issue presents five of the best new international consumer research submissions of recent months, as well as a book review of a new publication that should also be of interest. I hope to attract even more quality papers throughout the year. If you are doing research involving international, cross-national, or cross-cultural marketing, I encourage you to send your very best research papers to JICM! As you know, we are open to both B2B and B2C topics. For further guidance, please consult the journal's Taylor & Francis website at: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wicm20/current. All new submissions are handled through Manuscript Central and should be sent directly to the Manuscript Central page, which is: mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jicm.
One thing that I get to do as an editor in chief is to travel to academic conferences and present at “Meet the Editors” sessions. Just this past summer, I was at conferences in Florence, Italy (Global Fashion Marketing Conference), and Chicago (American Marketing Association) and greatly enjoyed meeting the young academics in attendance. I strongly encourage young researchers to attend such sessions when you go to academic conferences. Usually, after a very short presentation by each editor about his or her journal, the floor is opened to questions from the audience. This is your chance to understand what really happens when an editor gets your paper or to ask questions about the review process in a friendly atmosphere. All editors have their favorite examples of “rookie” author errors to avoid or their own personal suggestions to improve your chances of publication. You have seen some of mine in past editorials (such as, actually read and follow the Guidelines for Authors on the journal website because editors really care about this). Plus, after the session, you might want to introduce yourself to one or two of the editors and see if they might be interested in your most recent research. If nothing else, some of the mystery surrounding the review process will disappear, and you will come away with practical ideas on how to prepare your paper for journal submission. And if you attend a conference where I am presenting, please let me know who you are!
We present five new consumer research articles in this issue. The first, by Shruti Gupta and Pratish Srivastav, is a study of aspirational consumption at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). The BOP represents the largest and poorest global market segment, which has been roughly defined as the 3 billion people whose income is under $2.50 per day, and in recent years the BOP has attracted substantial research attention. I am delighted that JICM is making a significant contribution to this growing research stream. The remaining articles cover a wide range of topic areas, from the theory of planned behavior to online shopping, grocery shopper segmentation, and green buying behavior of young Millennials from India and the United States. Finally, our Book Review Editor, Abhijit Roy, presents his comments on a timely new book, Strategic Social Marketing, by Jeff French and Ross Gordon.
As always, I send out my sincerest thanks to my reviewers, who have consistently provided me with excellent comments on all papers and have helped me immensely. As always, I am hoping to attract some new ad hoc reviewers to the editorial team. If you enjoy reading JICM and would like to get some reviewing experience, send me a quick e-mail. Let me know what your research interests are, and I will do my best to match these to the papers I send you.
Enjoy the current issue, and consider sending your best international consumer research papers to JICM!